Random adventures in hiking, writing, and teching.

October 4, 2016April 11, 2017

Hackbright: Week One Completed!

Balloonicorn Jones (top left and bottom right) is a regular presence at Hackbright. #changetheratio #ofunicorns

Background:
I quit my full-time job in order to attend a full-time, 12-week, immersive coding bootcamp called Hackbright Academy in San Francisco. The first day was Monday, September 26, 2016. We’ll be completely done by Friday, December 16, 2016.

By that date, I will have learned Python, CSS, and HTML, built a web-app on my own from the ground up, and, hopefully be close to securing a full-time job as a front-end or full-stack developer.

First Week Summary:
Now that the first week has wrapped up, I really wanted to jot down some thoughts about the experience so far before I forget them altogether:

The daily schedule is deceptively comfortably paced, but quite intense. One of the reasons why I chose Hackbright was because of its emphasis on work-life balance and self-care (which comes up a lot). We start at 10 AM and end at 6 PM, Mondays through Fridays. Lectures and lab time are quite structured. There are plenty of breaks (“bio breaks”, hour-long lunch). On paper, it sounds not too bad. But…

I have a suboptimal commute from the Peninsula to San Francisco. It’s not the worst by any means, but it’s also not driving 5 miles (which was my previous commute to work). BART is ridiculously noisy (for which I’ve started wearing ear plugs every time). It’s taking some time to readjust.

We have homework every single night.

We have weekly skills assessments (required). The first one was due this past weekend and it took me about 6 hours. The estimate was 1 to 6 hours, so I guess I maxed out there.

Coding is a very mentally taxing activity that I can’t really do for hours on end without a break and/or deterioration to the quality of my work. It’s basically doing math and puzzle-solving while explaining the results using a foreign language, which I’ve yet to learn all the vocabulary and syntax for. It’s a very interesting challenge.

I pair programmed for the first time, and throughout the week with different pairs. I knew this was coming and somewhat dreaded it, but it was a really amazing and educational experience. Not to mention humbling. When my pair was more experienced with coding, I learned a lot from her in terms of how she worked. When my pair was less familiar with the approach I was proposing, it forced me to be more communicative with what I was suggesting and forced me to practice the lingo.

I git committed and git pushed code to my GitHub for the first time this week. I really can’t quite explain how giddy (gitty? :-P) I am about it, actually. When I first started learning all this on my own, I COULD NOT FOR THE LIFE OF ME figure out what GitHub was for. Now I know! Yay!

How I’m feeling right now: so humbled (the computer is NOT wrong; it’s a problem with my code and half the fun is figuring out what went wrong). So lucky to have the opportunity to just “take a break” and dedicate all day, everyday to learning something new. So tired, but excited to learn more new stuff tomorrow!